Business and Enterprise Architects: Preparing for Transformation

In Part 1, we shared how Enterprise Architecture is a valuable asset in your organization for navigating the complexities of the digital transformation journey. We focused on the important cultural and process changes that must occur to manage the uncertainties that will present themselves as organizations move through the transformation process. The knowledge of the Enterprise Architecture team is critical to plan and execute sustainable change. 

Join us here in Part 2 as we dig into specific areas of focus for EA as the process begins.

COLLABORATE WITH SENIOR BUSINESS LEADERS  

The art of telling, selling, and re-selling the transformation story is pivotal in gaining and maintaining support across the organization. Clarity between senior leaders and enterprise architects fosters a solid understanding of opportunities, complexities, and the path of highest return for the transformation journey that lies ahead. A key building block is mutual respect and trust.  

As an enterprise architect, clarity of thought and language are critical for these conversations. Your goal is to position senior leaders to question and probe every part of the thesis on how digital transformation addresses the business’s opportunities, plans, and challenges. This leads to symbiotic strategy development and strong buy-in for the program as a whole.  This phase is an important milestone in planning and EA teams should allocate time and focus to ongoing discussions that will formulate a practical pathway suited to address your business’s unique needs.

PLAN THE JOURNEY 

The first step in planning the transformation journey is to document the vision for the business and the role technology will play in fulfilling that vision. This should begin with a high-level view of the way the business wants to be seen by customers, staff and market influencers, and is accompanied by a set of goals and principles. Taking an ‘outside-in’ view of the business is advisable for the most successful outcome.

To identify and execute change opportunities that contribute to long-term objectives, it is most effective to unpack what will likely become a vast transformation agenda into smaller, more manageable (and therefore more achievable) increments with clear objectives, goals and outcomes. The EA team can share additional expertise about ‘planning horizons’ and ‘waves of change’ that can be useful for sequencing and grouping potential initiatives to ensure continuous improvement across what is likely a long and complex transformation horizon.  

An area where the enterprise architecture team can bring additional value is laying out and implementing a “test-and-learn” approach that will allow the business to see rapid value on small increments of work. This approach is quite different from the “waterfall” approach  to projects, but is becoming the norm for execution of high-value and fast-return transformation. In this method, continual delivery of usable improvements, progress monitoring, outcome measurement, customer feedback, and nimble plan adjustment build confidence about direction and goals throughout the journey, especially through early stages.

Using this approach, OneView’s modern architecture and technology transformed a national grocer’s ability to deliver new experiences by empowering the retailer’s teams to respond to customers’ changing shopping preferences with speed, efficiency, and a high level of autonomy. OneView Unified Commerce Platform provided direct access to a headless API catalog to eliminate vendor dependency and allowed the retailer to execute complex omnichannel POS customizations to deliver: 

• Pickup with Online Pay
• Pickup with Pay at Curb
• Warehouse-to-home delivery

• Building off the single code base, the retailer created a home delivery application to cost-effectively enter new markets where they did not have a store presence.     
• Rapidly added required functionality for filtering per route/driver to serve customers within 90 miles of any distribution center.        
• Scaled pickup and delivery to 1,018 store locations and 16 delivery centers, with drivers using 10,000+ devices deployed with the OneView solution.

FOCUS FIRST ON THE BUSINESS PROBLEMS, THEN THE TECHNOLOGY 

In selecting initiatives, focus first on business problems and new opportunities, not on the technology solution. Think deeply about customers, products, processes and people. Then look at how technology can help solve those problems and fulfill opportunities. The retail experience, market knowledge, and judgment of senior business executives are paramount in deciding on the direction, when to start, and how to proceed across the transformation lifecycle.

Transformation is not about running an Agile project (versus waterfall), creating bolt-on apps, or simply digitizing existing processes. To be successful and provide longevity, end-to-end business process redesign should extend well beyond look and feel. Operationally, your organization must become more robust, nimble and responsive to reap the benefits of the transformation investment.  

The enterprise architecture team brings specific skill sets to assist in this process by leading a review and simplification of processes to optimize customer value, speed and efficiency before the evaluation and implementation of new technology. While technology can appear to be the easier part of transformation, deploying robust, efficient solutions at scale continues to be challenging to do well.  

DEAL WITH COMPLEXITY  

As mentioned earlier, digital transformation further complicates an already intricate web of systems, processes, and interactions found in most retail businesses. It’s ironic that using modern digital technologies to provide appealing customer experiences that are easy to use, reliable, and efficient does generate incredible complexity behind the scenes.  

Coping with complexity is simply part of doing business today. Active simplification and avoiding over-analysis are useful practices to guide the organization through complicated issues. The EA team is well-suited to guide the business to apply these techniques by creating a clear view of the “future state” that articulates the objectives, milestones, and pathways for stakeholders at all levels.  

CREATE SIMPLICITY 

A common technique for dealing with deeply entrenched complexity is to create pockets of simplicity. This is achieved by decomposing a complex ecosystem into smaller parts until:  

• The parts can be comprehended by the human mind  
• The purpose, function, and behavior of each part is understood at a granular level
• Relationships and interactions between parts are visible  
• The source or root cause of problems becomes evident so they can be tackled  

To be most effective, EA teams should apply this technique by reviewing available documentation and speaking with a broad cross-section of people: business managers, process owners, operations staff, system support people, vendors, users, and sometimes customers. Essentially, the team “lifts the hood” of systems to investigate internal functions and logic to identify and document the most effective way forward to reach the end goals. 

Because humans crave clarity, we automatically seek understanding through analysis. However, absent a clear explanation, there is a tendency to over-analyze or simply grind to a halt. This “analysis paralysis” is highly unproductive and a fail point of many programs. By creating agility as the basis for your transformation, you will empower the organization to “start” and begin to see results that provide vital feedback and will, in turn, reduce the chance of over-analysis freezing the forward momentum of vital programs. 

In unpacking complex situations, starting with a few easy, active steps and learning as you go can lead to progress and the ability to gain traction to better address business challenges and opportunities. Creating an agile “test-and-learn” environment can be uncomfortable for many organizations. It is up to senior leaders to establish a new climate that paves the way for this continuous feedback approach as part of the journey.  

EMBRACE A SIMPLIFIED VIEW, BUT PLAN FOR COMPLEXITY

As every part of the organization becomes aware and gains knowledge of its role in transformation, the actions of the EA team become critical. The enterprise architects manage the intricate details of the processes that will empower the creation of the newly transformed and streamlined organization on behalf of senior executives, the board and the non-IT staff. With their knowledge and insights, ability to handle ambiguity and good communication skills, enterprise architects add clarity throughout transformation and convey the journey’s intricacies into a digestible form. This allows supporting teams to create interest, excitement, and commitment across all levels of the organization to drive the human and capital investments critical to project success. 

IDENTIFY AND CLEAR OBSTACLES 

Planning and executing a strategy is not straightforward. Aside from budget availability, the obstacles that hinder execution of meaningful change are plentiful and can often hamstring delivery teams from making effective progress.  

For instance, existing systems will continue to live and play an important role in providing core retail data and functions to new digital channels. Even if earmarked only to support transition arrangements, this may mean continued operation of the system for another 2-3 years.  

Enterprise architects play a valuable role in analyzing the business and IT landscape to identify potential obstacles that need attention. These may include process or system interdependencies, manual processes, systems approaching end-of-life, regulatory and compliance obligations (especially for supporting services with third parties or government entities), people skills, organizational change management capacity and maturity, industrial relations, or readiness of business partners (e.g., franchisees, suppliers) to embark on the transformation journey.  

Coming Soon: PART 3 

HIGHEST VALUE OBJECTIVES FOR THE ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE TEAM